During the Mighty Mighty Bosstones recent stop in Buffalo, Tim “Johnny Vegas” Burton, the Bosstones saxophonist and founding member, sat down with Backstage Axxess for an exclusive interview. The band’s tour manager touted Burton as the “resident historian.” Burton talked about the band’s history as well as some other tidbits, including his connection to one of the top grossing films of all time.
Thom: How long is The Mighty Mighty Bosstones current tour?
Tim: We are on a mini-tour right now, around eight dates.
Thom: How many dates do you do in a year now?
Tim: Maybe twenty or thirty, it depends. We do a summer run and the restof the stuff is just hit and miss, we did some shows in Europe a few months ago, and we are playing Riot Fest in Chicago next month. We may do a couple of winter dates.
Thom: The band started in Boston, but you live in Jacksonville, Florida,now. Where do the other members of the Bosstones live?
Tim: Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles; Berlin, Germany; New Haven, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island and rural Vermont.
Thom: So when you worked on your last album, “Pin Points and Gin Joints,” did a lot of the pre-production have to be done with Pro-Tools, with band members sending each other tracks?
Tim: We do that some; but it’s just to get to the germ of the idea out there. We really spent a lot of time together out in L.A. Joe Gittleman, our bass player, was living in L.A. at the time we were recording the album, so the whole rhythm section was out there. Dicky (Barrett) the singer, Lawrence (Katz) the guitar player, and Joe (Sirios) the drummer were all in L.A., so they would get together all the time. On occasion, I would fly out from Jacksonville and work on stuff with them and the other guys would
come in as well.
Thom: The Bosstones used to be a full-time gig for you, didn’t it?
Tim: It was a full-time gig from 1990 until about 2003.
Thom: What do you do you guys do to make a living now that the band has slowed down?
Tim: I’ve done some work on a couple feature films down in Jacksonville. I own some rental property and my wife has a really good job (laughs). I am kind of the anomaly, Joe Gittleman teaches college, Dicky works as the announcer on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lawrence produces stuff and writes for other bands and is working on a TV commercial right now. Joe Sirios has side projects and does session work as well, so a lot of the guys are active in the music business, and of course I do music too.
Thom: So when you do get out for these little jaunts, do you rent a rehearsal space to prepare or does everybody already know their parts?
Tim: On this tour, the first show was in Los Angeles, so we got together a few days before the first show and rehearsed a little bit. So to answer your question, yes, we always find time to rehearse at least a little bit before we go out. It’s not like we really need to though, we all know the stuff but we like to stay on top of things and make sure we sound fresh by working on some new stuff we haven’t done before.
Thom: If we could go back to the origins of the band, you came out of Boston but the Bosstones certainly don’t represent what people may consider the “Boston sound.”
Tim: We were just a bunch of kids hanging out in the punk rock scene when we started out. The hardcore punk scene was dominated by bands like Gangrene and Jerry’s Kids. We were also turned on to the 2 Tone Ska sound that was big in the early 1980s. To us, the things that were important and what we were bringing to the hardcore scene, at least philosophically, were mirrored in the 2 Tone Ska movement. Things like unity and racial harmony. They kind of looked like us too, they wore sweaters and had flat-tops. And as far as a typical band from Boston, I don’t know what a typical band from Boston is, but a band like the Bosstones could not have come from anywhere else. The music scene there was so diverse and when we experimented combining all these different sounds, they were really accepting of us, we got gigs and people didn’t laugh at us. I had been in the Los Angeles scene before joining the Bosstones and at that time, the L.A punk scene was so divided, the skins, the mods, the hardcores were all battling each other.
Thom: Sounds like what happened in England in the 1970s.
Tim: Yeah, that’s kind of what they were trying to recreate, but Boston was the complete opposite of that. They were putting together bills with hardcore bands, a reggae band and a metal band, whatever was fun, and that is kind of what the Bosstones were.
Thom: You are deservedly labeled as the ultimate party band. Speaking of other famous bands from Boston, you have a show coming up opening for the “Bad Boys from Boston.”
Tim: Yeah, Aerosmith! I am really excited to see those guys again. They are awesome.
Thom: Were they around when you were getting started in Boston?
Tim: We played a few shows with them back in the day. We opened for them at the Boston Garden.
Thom: Will this be the first time you have gotten together in a while?
Tim: Yeah, we kind of know them, they are really nice guys and I am looking forward to seeing them.
Thom: Could we talk about some of the iconic things associated with the Bosstones…like the guy who just dances onstage?
Tim: And prepares for it by eating sandwiches and drinking beer (laughs). Well, when we started we were all super young. I was the oldest in the band and I don’t think that I was even of drinking age. Most of the band was in high school but we were playing local clubs and the only way to get into the club was to be in the band. We used to say Ben was with the band to get him in the clubs and we told him to just get up onstage and dance around and he took the role and really ran with it.
Thom: I can’t think of any other band that has a guy dancer, usually they have scantily clad females.
Tim: I wish it had worked out that way for us (laughs). All kidding aside, Ben is a super nice guy, he has been a full member of the band since day one.
Thom: How about the origins of the plaid?
Tim: There are a lot of different theories on that one. I remember it going back to the 2 Tone thing, guys wearing suits and skinny black ties, we were trying to have our own twist on that. We showed up with the loudest, used car salesman blazers we could find, typically they were plaid. Then it developed into a philosophy, and we all started to wear plaid.
Thom: Your biggest album is “Let’s Face it” and one of the trends in live music is bands playing their classic albums from beginning to end. Have the Bosstones considered doing something like that?
Tim: We are actually doing something like that tonight, but it’s not that album (note: at the Buffalo show, the Bosstones played their debut album “Devil’s Night Out” in its original running order). We’ve never done that before but we are going to do it tonight.
Thom: Why did you decide to do it now?
Tim: We like to mix things up, we have fans that come to multiple shows, so if we can do something special for them that blows their mind then we will do it.
Thom: What are the bands plans for the future, I know you released an album last year, but are there any plans for new Bosstones music becoming available?
Tim: We don’t have any definite plans but we are always writing, messing around with things. We didn’t have to make the last record, in this climate it is so hard to market new material, so we recorded it for our fans and I am sure we will record again. As far as playing live, make us an offer and if it sounds fun we will do it!
Thom: One final thing, you came from the town where they filmed the movie “Jaws,” did you witness any of the filming?
Tim: Oh yeah, a lot of my friends were extras and my dad is in it. When they are putting up the “Beach is Closed” sign, my dad is holding it. The whole town was involved in the filming and nobody expected it to be one of the biggest movies of all time. Nobody knew who Steven Spielberg was or Richard Dreyfuss. I stood and watched a lot of the filming. I had no idea it was going to be that big, of course I was only eleven years old at the time, and looking back on the experience, maybe that is why I went to film
school and became involved in the movie industry. I really did see the whole process, I saw them show up, shoot it and I saw them in restaurants. To see the process was really cool.
Thom: And your name is Tim Burton, like another famous movie maker.
Tim: He’s no relation (laughs).
Tim went on to talk about the origins of his nickname “Johnny Vegas” while Bosstones’ frontman Dickey Barrett lurked nearby. After some idle chatter, Burton and Barrett posed for a personal picture with my sixteen-year-old son Trevor, who is a huge fan of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. My son treasured the moment and it was the perfect ending to a great interview.
We would like to thank Dana Gordon from Independent Music Media for setting up the Interview. For more information on Tim and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, please go to: http://www.bosstonesmusic.com/.
